


When the Cities Used to Fly

by Stell_Jager



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 07:25:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11823945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stell_Jager/pseuds/Stell_Jager
Summary: Do you want to hear a story?Yes, well have you thought about the risks?Stories are important you know. It wasn’t the princess killing the king that sparked the revolution; it was the story of it.Stories are dangerous wild thing that can create chains and break them. Stories are alive. Once you tell one the words breath, pulse, fly. Nothing is more dangerous than a story. Nothing lives longer.So, my child, do you want to hear a story?





	When the Cities Used to Fly

Do you want to hear a story?  
Yes, well have you thought about the risks?  
Stories are important you know. It wasn’t the princess killing the king that sparked the revolution; it was the story of it.  
Stories are dangerous wild thing that can create chains and break them. Stories are alive. Once you tell one the words breath, pulse, fly. Nothing is more dangerous than a story. Nothing lives longer.  
So, my child, do you want to hear a story?

      Once when the world was young and the gods old. When the world was so full of wonders and horrors that they were considered commonplace. It was not in your time nor in my time, but in a very good time. It was a long time ago, long ago, so long ago that no one can remember, and no tree can remember, and no rock can remember; so long ago no one now living believes it even happened. But sometimes on empty nights the dead will sing of it, and one night I lay in bed and heard them. And I will now tell you what I heard.

  
      The cities used to fly. They flew through the air like birds, soared over rolling waves of grain, and long flat plains of water. They always seem flat you see, for the ocean was much bigger in those days, and the creatures who lived there were much bigger, and so was their hunger. So in order to pass over the great seas safety the cities had to fly so high it seemed at any moment they would run into the stars. Some did in fact; some cities grew shells over themselves like turtles and flew away among the stars. Some people still claim to see them today, hiding in deserts, keeping themselves secret. As for me I think they would introduce themselves properly, but who knows it’s a frightening world, maybe they are as frightened of us as we are of ourselves.  
Looking up at the sky and longing, because we know that’s our home.

  
So that night when the dead sang of the cities that flew, I felt it in my heart that it was true, just as you would have felt it in your heart, so I summed my bravery and asked,

  
“Do you remember when the cities used to fly?”  
And one responded  
“Oh no not I not I  
For I was so young when the thing had begun  
That I was hardly a twinkle in an eye  
And by the time it was done  
Only my first breath had been rung  
Out of my tiny lung  
So not, I not I”  
I asked again and another replied  
“Oh no not I not I  
For I was so young when the thing had begun  
That I was hardly a twinkle in an eye  
And by the time it was done  
Only my second breath had been rung  
Out of my tiny lung  
So not, I not I”  
I asked again and yet another replied  
“Oh no not I not I  
For I was so young when the thing had begun  
That I was hardly a twinkle in an eye  
And by the time it was done  
Only my third breath had been rung  
Out of my tiny lung  
So not, I not I”

  
      I turned away disappointed, prepared to forget this night, mark it as a dream out of spite, I was younger then and more spirited and less wise. When the oldest of the lot said.  
“ It was only my third breath it's true,  
But my father’s mother was there when the cities fell.  
And so as my grandmother told my father, who told it to me  
So shall I tell it to you.”

  
      There was a little boy who liked to sail ships in the pond by the lake. Now it happens that little boy was my father. The cities were falling, but my father was playing by the lake, uncaring, or caring too much to pay attention to the heartbreak, children are funny that way. Children always play, no matter what happens. He liked to play with the boats in the small pond by the lake. He liked the boats because he knew how they worked, and he knew they would always work. Not so for the big boats in the sky. No one knew how they worked anymore. He had once lived in the city boats, but he had been so little when him and his momma's fled the riots he couldn’t remember. His momma said he had been a baby when he left, like his little sister was now. The little boy personally believed he had never been a baby, and was merely smaller when he was younger, like Tom Thumb.

  
      The little boy loved stories, especially fairy stories and that afternoon he would hear one that he would never forget, but never tell to anyone else until on his deathbed he he whispered it to his own little girl and she never forgot but never told anyone else, not even her own children, for when she was old and dying she had lost the ability to speak and so the story died with her.  
And so the ghost swore that I was the first to hear this tale since she heard it herself. For that night her grandmother came home injured from rescuing people from the last city as it fell. And even though she was in pain she told this story then went to sleep and never woke again. And the story was this.

  
      A story, a story, let it come, let it go. As the old people say It’s a small story. One of those things that get passed along, each person who tells adding to it as it goes from heartbreak, to gossip, to rumor, to urban legend, to myth. For now it's not very long though, short and sweet, like that little girl in the blue dress. Do you remember her? She used to buy bread at that little shop across the street on Sundays. Did you hear what happened? She fell off the edge. Yes it’s true, would I lie to you? And then you tell our neighbor who tells her children, and then the children ask why? Why did she fall? Well your neighbor doesn’t know of course so she tells them something about naughty children and the police not doing their jobs. So off go the neighbor’s children to tell everyone’s children, yes even yours! And then it spreads, and details are added and then child was pushed off the wall. And then the child could fly. Then she was a rich aristocrat, no a feisty orphan guttersnipe, no from a loving but not very well off home. And then she was going to come back one day save you, save me, save us. And then she was not true, made up, a myth. And then…

      So you see this little story got very big indeed. And after the fact people thought it was a tragedy of misdirection. And after the fact people wondered if it ever even happened, if it existed at all. And after the fact people felt very sorry for what had been done, all the riots, and the killing, and tears and blood. And most forgot about what they hated under the king's rule and went right back to it. Calling it democracy instead, like a name could make it better, it did a little bit. And the history books called the story propaganda, a lie, that caused an evil, awful, war that no one won except the people who did. And those people went on the write the history books. And they wrote about how awful it was to rebel. They knew such things now that they were in power. And that’s how it was taught to the children, and so the story almost died, as it rattled around in old people's heads, until it was whispered to children so it rattled around in their heads.  
But in the end it was considered fact. She never existed, and if she did she was ordinary. She never fell, and if she did she died and never flew. There is no such thing as magic, and if there was it certainty not here now so stop trying to remember a time when there was.

  
      Of course, of all the questions asked, and all the academic papers written, and all the belief in the fact that she didn’t exist, nobody asked about the dress. Everyone always knew it was blue. No one thought the think about why they knew, they just knew. It was a fact.  
Now you know it was just a child who fell off the edge, if she was real, and you know all these things can’t be all true at once. So how did you know the dress was blue? I told you, ah but how did I know. Come on figure it out I can’t just come out and say it you know. I made it up, do you really? …. Ah well.

  
      It was worth a shot, maybe, maybe, you will remember someday.  
Till then…here I will stay.  
What was the point?  
Well, as you can see the story got bigger, more complicated, it gained meaning, significance. It would be a very scary place for a little girl to get lost.  
Maybe she wants to be found again.”

  
      So the old ghost finished the tale, but seemed worried and said.  
“ Oh I feel like I’ve forgotten something,  
and my father said the same  
and he said his mother said the same as well  
and who knows how much was lost before it was told to her.  
Who knows how much was left lying forgotten on the road.”  
And so the old ghost sang her mournful song, and while that was not the end of the night, nor the last story I heard that night, nor even the last strange night or story, it is the only one I will tell today. Who knows how much damage this one alone will do.

  
Well, maybe you do.


End file.
